patrick.net

Strategist says

You are OK with genocidal maniacs wiping out the Yazidis and selling their their women as slaves?

You are sick.

As long as it involves keeping secular leaders in power and on their side of tracks, it beats bringing in refugees from said countries

bob2356 ... Obama didn't stay out of Syria. He used immense political pressure as well as deployed special forces units, drones, supported rebel opposition once those actors where more known, etc. He also very much wanted to strike but congress and political will from US and U.K. wasn't forthcoming.

The difference here with Trump is he did a unilateral strike, without congressional approval. This is actually the strike Obama had planned, scaled back to one airfield. A smart call by the NSC due to how many Russians are sprinkled throughout military installations in Syria now.

Any nation who uses chemical weapons should fear intervention by the US ... and fear our absolute cluster F of an administration too. The UN really doesn't have the capability to intervene in Syria.

Ironman says

bob2356 says

Obama was a bonehead, but staying out of syria was one of his better moves.

Really?? Staying out??

ha ha ha
Obama did not stay out of Syria, and screwed up anyway. What a loser.

marcus says

get it that right wingers think that type of thing is really nifty. Let's not look to not make promises we can't keep. Let's instead simply break promises. It's the new thing. I guess that's why we have Trump as President, the guy that doesn't pay contractors what he agreed to pay them before they did the work.

Oh come off it! Right now "promises are being broken" to millions of people in California with reduced government services, higher taxes, and bond holders getting the shaft just to keep government pensions afloat. How about all the poor people in Stockton and San Bernardino who are seeing their cities crumble and increased crime because the City government can't keep up with basic services and pay into the pension fund?

Everyone is getting a shit sandwich except the protected government bureaucracy.

My retirement fund in the Private Sector is not protected or guaranteed by the tax payer. Why should a government worker's GENEROUS retirement be guaranteed when it is invested in the same stock market that my retirement fund is in?

Face it - if you want to have any kind of pension when you retire, you are probably going to have to work longer, contribute more to your retirement and accept a smaller benefit.

marcus says

No, I don't. It's who you know, not what you know.

This is simply wrong in the education world.

They hire teachers based on paper qualifications, not necessarily someone with teaching skills who love to teach.
The result.....You have teachers who don't want to teach, and students who don't want to learn. Unions make it impossible to reverse the mess. What a disaster.

Here's what Obama did. He tried to get Congress on board instead of unilaterally striking. Congress was Republican and might very well have impeached him. Congress balked, and he used the pressure to get a deal to get rid of a lot of chemical weapons. He got rid of all of the chemical weapons that we knew about, which was by definition more than we ever could have gotten rid of by bombing. He also managed to keep enough pressure on Assad and Russia so that they did not use illegal chemical weapons again while Obama was in power. If you care about chemical weapon proliferation and use of chemical weapons, then this record is pretty good. Obama also managed to not let the US get dragged into another all out war costing trillions and hundreds of thousands due to US intervention. This is very good. What he didn't do was stop Russia from helping Assad kill a shit load of people. The US also looked a bit unclear about our red lines, because our government could not agree on a military solution. On the other hand, the big chemical weapons attack that he did do led to the destruction of a lot of (probably most of) Assad's chemical weapons stockpile.

Here's what Trump has done. Not much yet. He sent $60M worth of weapons over to hit some military targets, but he telegraphed the assault, to give the enemy time to protect it's resources. Minimum damage was done, and Assad resumed bombing in a day. We'll have to wait and see.

I'm adding this story to my long list of reasons not to live in California.

zzyzzx says

I'm adding this story to my long list of reasons not to live in California.

Must be a damn long list by now.

Ironman says

But there's more.

We don't know that for a fact, because he could have gotten more from Putin or made some or bought some from elsewhere. But I would guess that he just didn't disclose some, either intentionally or not. I would bet that he intentionally hid some away.

Did Obama oversell it, by failing to state the obvious possibility that they did keep some? Yes. I'd say that was probably a lie. It it was definitely not correct. The bigger picture is that a huge quantity of chemical weapons was destroyed, it was destroyed safely without collateral damage, and the quantity of weapons was much more than we could have ever destroyed by bombing.

Ironman says

You can't have it both ways to support your WaPo narrative.

I don't need to have it both ways, because I'm not saying that Rice was 100% correct.

You are trying to have it both ways by constantly trotting out Obama's list of lies while ignoring the encyclopedia sized stack of lies that Trump has amassed during his short time as a candidate and president.

Here's Rice's quote from the weekly standard article:

We were able to find a solution that didn't necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished.

There is nothing wrong with this statement. It is 100% accurate. All of the chemical weapons that were known in Syria were destroyed. It also makes the very relevant point that that was a huge accomplishment if you actually care about these weapons finding their way into the hands of terrorists. So, it is correct and relevant. You should strive for such qualities.

Rew says

bob2356 ... Obama didn't stay out of Syria.

I was talking about sending in conventional forces. There is no upside to any action we can take in syria. We want to fight assad. We want to fight ISIS. Perfect, we are fighting both sides of a civil war. What is the objective? What is the goal? What is the plan? Other than floundering around accomplishing nothing or making things even worse .

The neocon's never seem to learn. The problem isn't getting someone out. That's really easy. The problem is getting someone in that can lead well enough to end the war. So who is that someone in syria once assad is out? We would be better off with assad than total chaos for the next 20 years breeding ever more violence and terrorism spilling even further over into surrounding countries.

Ironman says

bob2356 says

Rew says

bob2356 ... Obama didn't stay out of Syria.

I was talking about sending in conventional forces.

And I gave you examples that Obama DID...

You doubling down on being wrong again???

He did not send in conventional units of military troops. Putting 400 people in as advisers is not going into a country. For once don't be a moron. Or at least try.

bob2356 says

We would be better off with assad than total chaos for the next 20 years breeding ever more violence and terrorism spilling even further over into surrounding countries.

Remember right after 9/11 the West was blamed for "blowback" by supporting dictators over the majority population?

Good times.

Like Egypt and Iraq today, we should support the least crazy of the bunch and have some influence without throwing up our hands and letting a dictator like Assad turn his country into an abattoir with the help of Russia and Iran causing the radicalization of an entire population and massive refugee crisis.

At the end of the day, I think big chunks of the Syrian and Iraqi map will need to be redrawn to reflect the demographic reality. It will need to be carved up like the Balkans.

bob2356 says

There is no upside to any action we can take in Syria.

I think that very much depends on the 'actions'. Pure military action, by our own forces alone, you are right. There is not much upside. It will be Iraq again because we do not have the national will to country build, and we have proven time and again, we really have no plan to do it unless it is after a 'total war' situation.

Dissect the current action:
- Syria and Russia just found the US willing, and able, to destroy military assets it can paint as being outside the rule of international norms for current rules of war
- There is broad international and domestic support for the strike
- US is asserting itself back into a role of 'enforcer of expected international norms', and is 'watching' for places it can intervene if it feels it needs to
- China and N Korea see shades of a foreign interventionist policy, which they know from Presidents past
- Trump transitions beyond just being incompetent and is now also "unpredictable with the worlds best military at his command"

Does this one strike "solve Syria" ... no. Does it really even "make Syria" better. Not by much. But that is quite a LOT of upside in my book there for the US, and in part Syria. The real fight is this: if I watched 22 members of my immediate family go out the hard way, by gas, I'd likely be looking for the first best ticket to go get some payback. Doesn't;t matter if that is IS or another Sunni rebel group.

The civil war is breeding terrorism. So, if we can exert military action to force cease fires and bring peace, well, those actions in Syria very MUCH would be worth it. The trick is to have that as the goal, and not devolve into a proxy war pissing match with Russia/Syria a-la 80s style cold war proxy wars we can all point to (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and to a degree, Korean war).

Cannot wait for Trump to be moved by the plight of children again, and impulsively start taking in refugees. ;) He looks like someone who can change his mind on a dime, so maybe even conversion to Islam soon? (fishing for thumbs down)

bob2356 says

We would be better off with assad than total chaos for the next 20 years breeding ever more violence and terrorism spilling even further over into surrounding countries.

Prop up a dictator, in the pocket of Russia and Iran, for stability OR help the rebellion take over Syria altogether and gamble that we get something better. Either seems equally horrible, but pressure for a cease fire to figure out which way the wind blows seems good to me. That has to be what is coming next. Tillerson talk ongoing today.

In a way, it's too bad we no longer have the "Gulf War" option on the table anymore (first Iraq war, under Bush Senior, destroys the Iraqi military right below the point of Saddam being unable to maintain control). That seemed to be Obama's play and the case he was making in 2013: go take away as much military capacity as we can away from Syria, and let them sort out their internal conflict. Alas, U.K. parilment and then US congress, so it was not to be. That was +2 nationalism to our current +1 globalism move of last week.

I will say I am terrified by the fact that I am very much FOR Trump being unilateral here, and acting outside the dictated institutional norm, even if it is a norm (declaring war, military action) that we have eroded since the 60s.

socal2 says

At the end of the day, I think big chunks of the Syrian and Iraqi map will need to be redrawn to reflect the demographic reality. It will need to be carved up like the Balkans.

Probably very much so. To a degree we can influence the outcomes, but those borders are best left to be defined by those there. As you said above though, the chaos generating terrorist groups has to be squashed to a degree. Europe is getting destabilized by this madness, and that is past an acceptable level of free-reign for them to sort things out, in my book.

YesYNot says

Here's what Obama did. He tried to get Congress on board instead of unilaterally striking. Congress was Republican and might very well have impeached him. Congress balked, and he used the pressure to get a deal to get rid of a lot of chemical weapons. He got rid of all of the chemical weapons that we knew about, which was by definition more than we ever could have gotten rid of by bombing. He also managed to keep enough pressure on Assad and Russia so that they did not use illegal chemical weapons again while Obama was in power. If you care about chemical weapon proliferation and use of chemical weapons, then this record is pretty good. Obama also managed to not let the US get dragged into another all out war costing trillions and hundreds of thousands due to US intervention. This is very good. What he didn't do was stop Russia from helping Assad kill a shit load of people. The US also looked a bit unclear about our red lines, because our government could not agree on a mi...

Nice summary. Thanks

YesYNot says

He also managed to keep enough pressure on Assad and Russia so that they did not use illegal chemical weapons again while Obama was in power.

That's not true. According to this UN report below, Assad used chemical weapons several times after the 2014 deal with Russia. And since Obama was embarrassed to point these attacks out after claiming success with his deal, Assad, Russia and Iran was emboldened to keep using them resulting in one of the worst refugee crisis since WWII,

"The Leadership Panel concluded that, in the cases of Talmenes (21 April 2014) and Sarmin (16 March 2015), they had sufficient information to determine that the Syrian Armed Forces were responsible for the attack which released toxic substances."
https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/dc3651.doc.htm

YesYNot says

Did Obama oversell it, by failing to state the obvious possibility that they did keep some? Yes. I'd say that was probably a lie. It it was definitely not correct.

Makes you wonder what Obama and his foreign policy team like Ben Rhodes lied about with the Iran deal.

It's in the wapo. Fake news!

Just kidding. This is not good news for Trump. It doesn't prove his stupid tweet correct.

Ironman says

he spooks (and Obama) specifically and deliberately listened to and targeted Trump'

They targeted a guy who has lots of ties to Russia, was giving pro Russia speeches in Russia, and meeting with people close to Putin. And that's the part we know about. He wasn't that close to Trump, but was trying to get closer. That's not targeting Trump tower or Trump associates in general.

This is Neil Gorsucks America now. Lay back, and try to relax a bit. We're in for a serious reaming, the less you resist, the less it hurts

Cannot wait to hear what they continue to find. Go get em FBI!

If this is what Trump's was referring to and proof that he was right, why isn't he crowing about it on Fox News? Instead, he is bragging about shooting off missiles and blaming Obama for doing what Trump himself thought that Obama should do in 2013.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/12/panicked-trump-carter-page-scandal-fox-obama-lies.html

Edit - my bad. I see that he did crow about this and I didn't see it earlier. Now, I have to eat some crow.

jazz music says

Air pollution causes 200,000 early deaths each year in the U.S.

And a hell of a lot more deaths worldwide. Our lungs were not designed to breathe exhaust fumes.
I did my part to reduce pollution, did you guys do yours?

jazz music says

Things to think about: how to take back America from corporate rulership. Some people have been thinking about this for years now.

Someone, please remind the Pink Panther that communism failed a long time ago.

jazz music says

I do not claim to be the expert with all the answers

We know, Jazz. We know.

Maybe the conservative right would give a shit if we told them that Islamists are committing 50 9/11's a year by polluting. Same diff. Coal is Jihad.

Strategist says

I did my part to reduce pollution, did you guys do yours?

Have your communicated your thoughts to the 'conservative' politicians that you love? They are not conserving our environment at all these days.

Then stop the chemtrails!

How come all of the shit that comes out cow butts, car exhaust and human's mouths are bad for Climate change.
But the elitists flying to receive their accolades has no problem creating a full lattice of Jet Fuel exhaust all over planet, and nobody says a word.

I'm knocking the next dickhead on his ass that mentions Global Warming like it's a thing.

Only 200,000? I'd think it's higher.

Diesel in particular is harmful to health. My dad used to work in the emissions group at Chrysler, and told me that diesel particles are uniquely sized to stick in the alveoli of our lungs.

But diesel is cheap! If it comes down to public health or business profits, who is going to win?

rando says

Only 200,000? I'd think it's higher.

Diesel in particular is harmful to health. My dad used to work in the emissions group at Chrysler, and told me that diesel particles are uniquely sized to stick in the alveoli of our lungs.

But diesel is cheap! If it comes down to public health or business profits, who is going to win?

Eventually it will be public health that wins.
Renewable energy is getting cheaper by the day. Autos have started going hybrid and electric. It's just a matter of time before fossil fuels become so uncompetitive that no one will want to use it.

We are ALL powuters,some much more than others.
Parents with one child increase their environmental devastation by 50% each.
2 childs-100%
3 childs-150%
4 childs-200%
On & on.
Are you the problem?

Non birth control SEX will destroy the human race.
Look around,too many stupid fuck people.

We need an executative precedential order to outlaw the TRUTH!

Air pollution causes 200,000 early deaths each year in the U.S.

YesYNot says

Strategist says

I did my part to reduce pollution, did you guys do yours?

Have your communicated your thoughts to the 'conservative' politicians that you love? They are not conserving our environment at all these days.

I'm an Independent. I only love their stand against Islam, and their support for capitalism. Other than that, I am a liberal.

rando says

Only 200,000? I'd think it's higher.

Absolutely. 200,000 are only the "beyond any doubt" cases. The fact is we live in a society where the laws says that corporations cannot be held liable for death, disease, or other harm they inflict on hundreds of millions of Americans unless the harm can be traced back to a single source. So, if a corporation stabs a person to death, they are liable. If ten corporations stab a million people to death, they are not liable. This is why they can pollute with impunity. The cancer you get will be caused by a multitude of corporations, so no one will be held responsible and you have to just bear the consequences in the form of suffering, expenses, and premature death. Sucks to be you. You should have been born a corporation like other persons.

rando says

But diesel is cheap! If it comes down to public health or business profits, who is going to win?

Pollution is only cheap to the polluters, just like burglary is cheap to burglars. To the rest of society pollution is far more expensive than not polluting. It's a net wealth destroyer.

Ironman is CLEVER.
He uses the infrastructure that was built with the help of some Liberal tax dollars.
Couldn't build it himself.
Sounds like SOCIALISM!

"You gonna learn today."
This is the proper EXPERT TROLL RESPONSE to those that think that they can compete
in the expert troll class.

No. Anybody who bloodies someone else's melon is taking a risk themselves. When they do it in public, they are playing Russian roulette with everybody else's life as well. Add this to the damage that the 'officers' did.

If United employees had bled,would we have a stupid epidemic?

You built this!

https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/849977750932901888

Political correctness demands that you treat people bubbling with infections diseases, even Ebola, as if they are perfectly normal. You wouldn't want to make them feel "less than" when they are potentially infecting hundreds of people in a closed space.

This thread is ripe for a fudge packing joke, but I am an honorable person, so I won't do that.

Right - Thanks!